


Everything Is Never As It Seems

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: 2019 SPN Fluff Bingo [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death (One Owl), Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Lots Of Owls, Sam Winchester Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 20:12:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18431261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Sam Winchester had decided long ago that he was never going to tell his father or brother about the owls.





	Everything Is Never As It Seems

**Author's Note:**

> First appearance in the free online Sam Winchester Zine. Written as part of the Greek God AU square fill for the SPN Fluff Bingo.

**S** AM HAD DECIDED long ago, back when his brother had first started reading  _ Harry Potter _ to him, that he was never going to mention the owls, ever. It wasn't that Sam had any fundamental objection to being a wizard or having some kind of powers or affinity for owls or whatever was going on. It was more the fact that his father - and, to a lesser extent, his brother - firmly believed that there was nothing good about the supernatural, full stop, no matter what. This, Sam knew, was an attitude which did not bode well for a boy whom owls followed and with whom they held conversations he halfway understood, who already butted heads with their father's authoritarian rules and militaristic training piled on top of a migrant lifestyle Sam hated with a passion. When he learned that his father and brother actively hunted and killed supernatural creatures - ostensibly because they were killing humans, though in one case there had been no deaths, just signs of a possible witch that had John Winchester going off on the evils of all witches and all things magic - well, Sam could read between the lines as easily as he could read plain text. Magic bad.

So no, he wasn't going to tell his brother or father about the owls that watched him from the wood line and perched on trees or signs outside the hotel rooms like sentries, or the ones he caught sight of flying over his head at night on a hunt, their hooting and screeching translating into simple ideas and concepts in his mind that kept him alive on more than one occasion when a ghost or werewolf or skinchanger would have gotten the drop on him.

"You didn't wish me away when I was a baby, did you?" he jokingly asked Dean once, after his class got to watch  _ Labyrinth _ instead of doing school work because it was the day before the winter holidays.

"Never," Dean answered, with such intensity that Sam quickly backed down and changed the subject.

That was the closest he had ever gotten to saying anything about the owls, and he never even got that close again. Not when he ran away the first time and the owls were his companions that kept him safe from human predators. Not when he ran away the second time and the owls helped him find the abandoned house and the dog that had been left tied up in the yard to starve, who brought him gifts of dead rabbits to supplement his pizza and junk food diet and to feed Bones until Dean tracked him down and dragged him back on the road. Not when his father found the Stanford acceptance letter and didn't even get to the part about the full ride scholarship before he was shouting about how Sam was a disgrace to the family, a traitor to his mother's memory for ever wanting to leave the hunt, and if he did leave then he'd better plan on never coming back.

He didn't see the owls much at Stanford. Too bright and busy, he guessed, and soon he forgot about them in the rush of  _ learning _ , of being allowed to spend hours in the campus library taking in knowledge on whatever subjects interested him, of taking as many classes as he could fit into his schedule in an effort to "catch up" to where he felt he should be after getting such a "late" start to his college education because of his patchwork school records. The librarians knew him on sight, most of them willing to bend the rules on hours for him so long as he did actually get a reasonable amount of sleep per week, and one of his professors swore he devoured books the way his peers devoured ramen cups and coffee.

It was pure coincidence that, when his friend Brady conspired to finally introduce Sam to the girl he'd been insisting was perfect for him, she happened to be wearing a t-shirt with a bedazzled owl face across the chest. It turned out that the shirt belonged to her roommate and not to her, but it was enough to get shy and socially awkward Sam to start a conversation with Jessica Moore that eventually led to them dating, and then sharing an apartment. The owls kept watch over them when they moved in together, and while Jess found it a little odd that there was always at least one owl outside their bedroom window every night, she never directly asked Sam about it and so Sam never said a word, not even when the owl's warning hoot woke him the night that Dean broke into their apartment after three years of radio silence and asked for Sam's help finding their father.

On the road with Dean again, even for just one case, and it was like he had never left the life of a Hunter at all. The same scent of the Impala around him, the same mullet rock blaring from the car's tape deck speakers because "driver picks the music," and the same flash of silent wings just visible out of the corner of his eye following him overhead. He missed Jess, but she had always been just a little bit like Dean that sometimes he would look over at the green eyes next to him and the face around them startled him.

"I'm not unfaithful!" he yelled at the ghost of Constance as she reached for him.

"You will be," she answered, certain in her condemnation, and not even the screeching of the barn owl that flew through her and made her back off could rip the words and the fear they ignited from his mind.

He knew Dean was hurt by his insistence on returning to Stanford immediately, but Sam couldn't shake the feeling of something very, very wrong. When they pulled up in front of Sam's apartment, however, everything was quiet. Dean looked as if he wanted to say something about how there was nothing to worry about, but for Sam, whose definition of quiet had come to include soft hoots of the ever-present owls, this total quiet was setting him on edge. Dean, for all the distance between them created by years of separation, could still read his brother like a book and got out of the car at the same time as Sam, following him up to the apartment building and looking around.

"Hey... what's that?"

Sam looked in the direction Dean was pointing, at the base of a tree not too far from the building, a tree Sam recognized as the one most of his nightly guardians would perch in, and the tangled mass of feathers beneath it. His stride was long and unsteady, already guessing what he would see, but he still felt sick to confirm that the pile of feathers belonged to a very dead owl, its talons bloody and clutching torn scraps of fabric. Sam bent down closer, studying the scraps and the blood as Dean came up behind him. He sniffed.  _ Sulfur... shit. _

"Dean," he began as he stood, turning hard eyed on the apartment as he reached for his gun, his voice thick and tight with the sudden grip of a fear he could not afford to give voice to right now.

"Right here, Sammy," his brother's own calmer, steadier voice intoned behind him, and Sam heard the click of the safety on Dean's gun. No questions, no demands for an explanation, just immediate understanding and trust in his brother's gut instinct that something was very definitely  _ wrong _ . It bolstered Sam's resolve, just as it always had when they were kids.

Together they climbed the stairs to the apartment. Sam tried the door and found it unlocked, another warning bell going off in his head; Jess always kept the door locked when she was home alone. The inside of the apartment, too, was quiet and still. The cookies on the counter nearly made him pause - just like Jess to start baking to surprise him - but a hand held over the tops told him they had been out of the oven for hours.

"Cookies?"

"She likes to bake. Jess?" Sam called out, abandoning subtlety now in favor of expediency. "Jess!"

"You sure she's home, dude?"

"Positive," Sam pointed to the kitchen counter where a black purse sat next to a set of keys. "She always locks the doors, and even if she didn't take her purse she would have taken her keys, even if she was just running next door. Jess?!"

"Bedroom?"

The question sent ice through Sam's veins. He swallowed hard, forcing the cold knot down out of his throat. It settled like a lead weight in his stomach, making each step he took towards the bedroom feel heavier and heavier until he was at the threshold of the bedroom, peering into the darkness. "Jess...?"

Silence. The bed was empty and still neatly made. The clothes that had been scattered in Sam's hasty attempt at packing were gone, presumably put away in one of Jess's fits of "I can't stare at a textbook anymore, I need to clean something". Sam stepped further into the room, shivering at the draft from the open window... He stopped short, eyes going to the window and its lack of screen with a curse, and then began frantically scanning the room for anything else out of place. It wasn't until he heard Dean's "oh, shit, Sammy," as his brother grabbed at his shoulder and jostled Sam off-balance that he looked up.

It was macabre. It was unreal. It was like every crazy nightmare Sam had been having the last few weeks suddenly coughed up and splayed out across the ceiling in stark relief, all white and blue in the darkness save for the vivid slash of crimson right across the middle of the canvas that held Sam rooted to the spot until it burst to life in a bloom of flames. Jess, sweet and beautiful Jess, staring down from the ceiling as the fire spread out from above and beneath her body to consume her and the ceiling... Sam's throat ached from screaming, but he could hear no sound above the roaring in his ears. His body strained to get to her, reaching for her to try and pull her down, only for steel bands to wrap around his chest and stomach and pull him farther and farther away. He fought against the pull, fought to reach her, he had to reach her, to save her, please--

\--not Jess--

\--no--

\--Jess...!

Dean was shouting.

The fire was spreading from the bedroom to the rest of the apartment, and Dean was shouting at him.

The fire was spreading to the rest of the building, and Dean was pulling him out, slamming down the lever for the fire alarm as he went.

The fire was visible from the grounds, lighting up the night as people poured out of the building in various states of undress and alarm, and Dean was there, gripping Sam tight, rocking him.

Dean was rocking him the way he had when they were kids and Sam had been wrenched awake by a nightmare of a hunt gone wrong.

It was all wrong.

Sam clutched at his brother, vision blurring and ribs aching, and howled out his rage and grief into the night, not caring who heard.

To his right, by the tree, an owl screamed back.

His world continued to burn.

The night passed in a blur. Paramedics came and went. Police came and went and came again. Sam went through the motions like a wind-up doll whose springs and gears were rusting, stuttering and staggering through medical checks, interviews, more interviews... At some point, the owl that had screamed with him came to sit beside him opposite of Dean, and refused to be moved. Sam nearly bit the head off the animal control agent that tried to physically take the bird away, and only Dean's calm and rational voice soothed the agent into leaving the living owl alone as they collected the remains of the dead owl from beneath the tree. A distant corner of Sam's mind knew that he would be grilled by his brother for this, but in that moment he could only be grateful for Dean's support. The owl hooted softly when he brushed the backs of his fingers over its head, a mournful note of sympathy that Sam found himself echoing.

"Sammy?"

"Dean..."

Their eyes met, and the years apart fell away. Sam could see every nuance of expression in Dean's face, and new that his brother could see everything in his. A glance at the owl, a shrug, a quirked eyebrow answered by a tight frown, a sigh...

"It's not riding in the Impala."

"He'll keep up." Sam looked down at the owl and held out an arm. The owl studied the offered perch before shuffling closer and climbing up onto Sam's forearm, talons gripping his arm through the layers, and looked up at Sam.

_ Hell will pay for this, _ the fierce golden eyes seemed to say.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, the fire and ash of his world cooling into hardened steel along his spine. "We've got work to do."

**=End=**


End file.
